Urban Institute: UI has announced several new releases from Aug. 20-Aug. 20, 2014. Reports are usually in .pdf format. Older new releases can be found by clicking on ‘next page’ at the top right side of the page.

Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report: The latest issue of MMWR, Vol. 63, No. 34, August 29, 2014 (HTML and .pdf formats available from the US Centers for Disease Control site). Note: To access this issue in the future, simply click on “Weekly Report” and then “Past Volumes” on the left side of the page.

State Center for Health Statistics Brief: “Disability and Exposure to High Levels of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) in North Carolina: The Effect on Health and Risk Behavior,” by Harry W.B. Herrick and Anna E. Austin (No. 169, August 2014, .pdf format, 8p.).

1. Australian Institute of Family Studies Report: “Property and financial matters upon the breakdown of de facto relationships,” by Rachel Carson (Paper No. 24, August 2014, .pdf and HTML format, 17p.).

Bureau of Business and Economic Research Report: “Building on the Past, Facing the Future: Renewing the Creative Economy of New Mexico,” by Jeffrey Mitchell and Gillian Joyce (2014, .pdf format, 212p.).

Rand Labor and Population Program Working Paper: “Soft versus Hard Commitments: A Test on Savings Behaviors,” by Jeremy Burke, Jill E. Luoto, and Francisco Perez-Arce (WR-1055, July 2014, .pdf format, 21p.). Note: Links to the abstract and the full text of the paper available at:

Research Institute for Quantitative Studies in Economics and Population [McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario] Working Paper: ” A Shortcoming of the Conventional Approach to Statistical Explanation for Wage or Income Variation: Offering a Better Alternative,” by Kao-Lee Liaw and Ji-Ping Lin (Research Review No. 453, August 2014, .pdf format, 68p.).

Abstract:

In explaining wage or income by personal attributes (e.g. educational attainment, age, and ethnicity) in a regression model, many researchers choose to use the log of wage or income asthe dependent variable and then to estimate the unknown coefficients by some version of theleast-squares method. We call this approach the conventional approach.

Using the micro data of the 2005-2007 American Community Survey and Taiwan’s 2001-2010 Manpower Utilization Survey, we show that the conventional approach has the serious shortcoming of under-predicting the observed wage structure in the space spanned by the values of the explanatory variables. In addition to revealing the reason for the under-prediction problem and linking the severity of this problem to wage variability, we present a nonlinear approach that does not have this shortcoming. We also offer a SAS module for carrying out the estimation task in the nonlinear approach.

Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research Data Release: ICPSR announced the release of a new datasets on August 24, 2014. Note: Some ICPSR studies are available only to ICPSR member institutions. To find out whether your organization is a member, and whether or not it supports ICPSR Direct downloading, see:

University of Michigan Population Studies Center Working Paper: “Motherhood Penalty and Fatherhood Premium? Fertility Effects on Parents in China,” by Zheng Mu and Yu Xie (PSC Research Report No. 14-825, August 2014, .pdf format, 30p.). Note: Links to the abstract and the full text of the paper available at:

Australian Institute of Family Studies Report: “Children affected by domestic and family violence: A review of domestic and family violence prevention, early intervention and response services,” by Monica Campo, Rae Kaspiew, Sharnee Moore, and Sarah Tayton (August 2014, .pdf format, 117p.).

Statistics Canada/Statistique Canada Report: “Net Worth of the Household Sector, 1970 to 2012: A Canada-United States Comparison,” by Amélie Lafrance and Ryan Macdonald (Analytical Studies Branch Research Paper Series No. 94, August 2014, .pdf format, 35p.). Note: Links to the abstract and the full text of the paper available at:

August 22, 2014

Demographic Research Article: “Attrition in the Austrian Generations and Gender Survey: Is there a bias by fertility-relevant aspects?” by Isabella Buber-Ennser (Vol. 31, Article 16, August 2014, .pdf format, p. 459-496).

Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences [Washington University] Working Paper: “Use and Communication of Probabilistic Forecasts,” by Adrian E. Raftery (Working Paper No. 145, August 2014, .pdf format, 26p.).

Abstract:

Probabilistic forecasts are becoming more and more available. How should they be used and communicated? What are the obstacles to their use in practice? I review experience with five problems where probabilistic forecasting played an important role. This leads me to identify five types of potential users: Low Stakes Users, who don’t need probabilistic forecasts; General Assessors, who need an overall idea of the uncertainty in the forecast; Change Assessors, who need to know if a change is out of line with expectatations; Risk Avoiders, who wish to limit the risk of an adverse outcome; and Decision Theorists, who quantify their loss function and perform the decision-theoretic calculations. This suggests that it is important to interact with users and to consider their goals. The cognitive research tells us that calibration is important for trust in probability forecasts, and that it is important to match the verbal expression with the task. The cognitive load should be minimized, reducing the probabilistic forecast to a single percentile if appropriate. Probabilities of adverse events and percentiles of the predictive distribution of quantities of interest seem often to be the best way to summarize probabilistic forecasts. Formal decision theory has an important role, but in a limited range of applications.

Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report: The latest issue of MMWR, Vol. 63, No. 33, August 22, 2014 (HTML and .pdf formats available from the US Centers for Disease Control site). Note: To access this issue in the future, simply click on “Weekly Report” and then “Past Volumes” on the left side of the page.

NEW: 2014-17 “Heading into Trouble: A Comparison of the Latin American Crises and the Euro Area’s Current Crisis,” by Manuel Ramos-Francia, Ana María Aguilar-Argaez, Santiago García-Verdu, and Gabriel Cuadra-García.

US Federal Trade Commission Working Paper: “Privacy in Online Markets: A Welfare Analysis of Demand Rotations,” by Daniel P. O’Brien (Working Paper No. 323, July 2014, .pdf format, 43p.). Note: Links to the abstract and the full text of the paper available at: